Dear Gert,
I thank you very much for your site that I found searching news about Lima de Faria.
IMHO the problem of biologists is that - because of having been too much oppressed in the past by all sort of religions, priests and creationism - they don't want to hear to talk about "invisible" any more. But the greatest forces the complex living beings move against and toward are of physical nature: gravity and sunlight. My evolution from a MD to a "monstrous" :-) kind of evo-devo biologist is due to these observations: http://tinyurl.com/4pkeaf4
Best regards,

Stefano

01.03.2011 03:49, Keith Allpress :

Hi Gert
In regard randomness - I think you are simply talking about operations, eg rotation, reflection, folding and other algebraic operations that transform hands into other hands, plus the idea of self-symmetry, transforms that can operate within a pattern. As a programmer I learn to look for behaviours, this is what distinguishes patterns into classes of behaviour.
The properties of the pattern determine how the steps needed to encode the pattern - more intrinsically ordered patterns should have algorithmic procedures to synthesise them, less ordered patterns will be less algorithmic. Also evolution might favour patterns that had fewer synthetic steps.
Keith

25.11.2010 08:13, gert korthof :

Hi Todd,
thanks!
I know your name from the countless Amazonreviews!
We share interest in a lot of subjects, and as far as I can see, you are reviewing books as long as I do.
Success with everything!
Gert

24.11.2010 19:37, Todd I. Stark from Philadelphia, Pa. USA
:

Gert, thanks so much for maintaining this very valuable site for the past decade. Your efforts are very much appreciated and I think this is an extremely valuable educational resource that should be more widely utilized.

You deserve a great deal of credit for your expert handling of the materials here as well as their breadth and depth.

I was very pleased to see that the site is still active and has evolved from its remarkable treatment of Darwin and his followers, modifiers, and critics into the shape of biology to come. Bravo.

But, a step further is required. How had the RNA become alive, i.e. how did it (1) uptake the sun's radiation and how did it (2) catalytically use it to perform work, to keep augmenting its constrained energy by keeping augmenting its self-propagation, WHICH IS THE ESSENCE OF LIFE ?

THIS IS THE STILL MISSING TWIST IN THE BRANCHING OF LIFE FROM OTHER SURVIVING, ENERGY DIGESTING, MATTER SUCH AS BLACK HOLES. THIS TWIST IS THE BIOLOGICAL ENTITY "CULTURE", LEARNING-ADAPTING, THE ESSENCE OF DARWINIAN EVOLUTION SINCE LIFE'S DAY ONE. THIS MUST HAVE BEEN THE CRUCIAL PROCESS TWIST, EVEN WITHOUT YET KNOWING ITS MECHANISM.

Or, is the mechanism of this twist known now?

It is now known how the RNAs, Earth's primal organisms, adopt an enhanced energy event's DNA conformation. But what is the mechanism of its recognizing the enhanced energy event? Does it derive from augmented RNA propagation and alternative splicing feedback loop, or is the augmented propagation a result of an energetic feature recognized by the RNA?

B. Ponder with plain commonsense, and stick to obvious data.

Sleep and chirality are data, evidence that RNAs ARE ORGANISMS, alive, that came into being and were active prior to evolution of biometabolism. RNAs are not just "genes in the organisms". They are Earth's base primal organisms. Plain and simple. Why complicate the obvious simple evident data?

Add to this the embarrassingly obvious evident data-based concepts of the dual cycle universe, with cosmic expansion as the driver of universal evolution, the continuous melee of mass formats for energy.

Our essential science interests should be the BASIC ESSENTIAL existential matters. Seek them carefully within the infinite number of mechanisms. Focus on the mechanisms that are rational evidence for the basic matters.

This is the opinion of an old-timer, a self-considered scientist, tired of the preposterous 20th-21st centuries technology culture and of the century-old corrupt science tradeunion-guild-establishment
.

Dear Reader,
thank you for your comment.
The page on the New Scientist website does not exist anymore, so I cannot fix it.
But the complete letter is reproduced at the top of my page
http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/k ortho44a.htm

04.10.2010 03:11, Reader :

http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/k
ortho44a.htm

The links "Letter to the New Scientist" and the "reply" are broken. Would you please fix them? Thanks.

WOW!!! Have you completely misunderstood the most basic principles of evolution!!! Evolution starts with a fertilised egg???? What planet are you on???
Read Richard Dawkins "greatest show on earth" then try again

31.07.2010 09:51, gert korthof :

Dear Oren,
thanks very much for your message. Great that you found my website. I have changed the description on:
http://home.planet.nl/~gkortho
f/korthof.htm
Nowadays so many new books appear that I cannot read them all! So thanks again for informing me!
Gert

30.07.2010 15:42, oren harman
:

dear gert,

first of all, i want to thank you warmly for your wonderful website. i find it incredibly up to date and useful, and i'm sure the entire community is thankful to you for a job well done.

there is one correction that i need to offer: you kindly mention my book 'the price of altruism' but incorrectly state that it is about altruism but restricted to george price. actually, as i'm sure you'll see when you read the book, it is the most extensive treatment of the history of altruism that exists in the literature. it is two books in one really - a grand history of attempts to crack the riddle of altruism going back to darwin, and george price's story. i'd be most grateful if you made this correction.

I am going to find about Cicero's work and consider adding your info to the page on my website.
Thanks,
Gert

12.07.2010 04:43, Adam Crowl from Australia
:

Hi Gert
Just read your review of the book about the Design argument in antiquity and there's a good example of arguments for and against in Cicero's "On the Nature of the Gods", as well as well as multiple arguments for design in the Pseudo-Clementine literature. They're surprisingly familiar sounding and as unsatisfying as their modern day equivalents.

17.06.2010 15:26, morris from Nairobi
:

I perused through you page, which I kind of stumbled upon. I like your arguments especially in the review of the language of god, whch led me to your site.

Now i have a request, for I wouldlike to request you to review my essay.

I will appreciate your reply.

Regards

Agaba

27.05.2010 00:06, Matthew Turner :

Dear Gert,
Thanks for your preliminary comments. I'll try and fix these things up for the next revision (especially by adding a Summary)!
I hope you get enough spare time soon to be able to read through this book now that you have it - I very much look forward to your comments, be they favourable OR unfavourable!
Your open-mindedness and willingness to correspond with me so far has been ENORMOUSLY appreciated!
Regards,
Matthew
(Incidentally you may prefer the Lulu.com pdf as it is formatted exactly like the book & has page numbers in the Contents and proper footnotes - the Smashwords versions are unfortunately quite a bit messier.)